Tuesday, May 5, 2009

And if that’s not enough, Harper’s income trust tax was a broken promise that sucker punched seniors and saw them lose their only means for pension income and kiss goodbye to $35 billion of their life’s savings. Apart from that, what’s not to like about this measure? Especially since we all know ‘tax leakage” is a falsified hoax perpetrated by Mark Carney and propagated on the public airwaves by sycophant news organizations like BNN, Biased News Network of CONTVGlobeMedia.

At one brief moment in time, I had reason to believe that Amanda Lang of BNN (Biased News Network) perhaps understood what this policy was all about. People at the time said that I was reading far too much into her statements of October 31, 2008 which caused me to write the following:

On yesterday’s BNN show Squeeze Play, host Amanda Lang asked the operative question, which to paraphrase, was “if income trusts were shut down because of a tax advantage, then why are the pension funds allowed to keep their tax advantage?”

A perfect example is the present bid by OMERs to acquire Teranet Income Fund. Teranet income fund is taxable at the rate of 31.5% in the hands of its current public owners. OMERs will not have to pay this tax.

This is called a tax arbitrage. Government induced tax arbitrage. Such an arrangement is anything but “tax fairness” or “leveling the playing field”. So what exactly is Flaherty’s explanation for this gross disparity? Some Canadians are more important than others?

How will the ownership of Teranet by OMERs as an income trust, resolve any of the alleged problems with income trusts? It defies logic. It defies reason. What is Flaherty’s defense?

See Amanda’s comments at about the 8:10 mark at:

http://watch.bnn.ca/#clip108153

Bravo Amanda! Inquiring minds need to know.

Those words were premature, since Amada has lapsed back into her stance of loving a policy that lacks any evidence as to its merit and results in a retroactive tax that’s applied discriminatorily using false pretenses. Meanwhile we have BNN’s sister organization bemoaning EI benefits and writing editorials entitled “End the discrimination”. Even the Globe and BNN finds themselves arbitrarily discriminating against one form of discrmination (that is bad?) and other forms of discrimination that are great!

How very unimpressive and indiscriminate in judgment.....and character?

"The $100-million threshold is relevant because so few closed-end funds have hit this level of relevancy. The O'Leary Global Income Opportunities Fund - the latest offering from BNN TV host Kevin O'Leary - got this kind of backing in February."

EVENTS

Income Trust Halloween VigilThanks to all who participated in both the Ottawa and Calgary vigils to mark the anniversary of the announcement.

WE"D LIKE SOME ANSWERS

As you well know, the ‘income trust thing’ has grown beyond the
question of whether fair taxes are paid on income from trusts. It’s
become a giant dirty snowball, and as it rolls forward it accumulates
more and more bulk. There are so many unanswered questions. Let's list a few and invite our "Accountable" government and our free press to provide some much-needed answers.

It is said “Trusts are inefficient use of capital. Why?” Two
related questions are ‘Whose money is it, anyway?’, and ‘Do Canadian
investors have a free and efficient market?’

How can information that is already in the public domain at SEDAR
make for a state secret? How could such information be used to harm
the Canadian national interest? And who would cause the harm?

Why won’t the Canadian media investigate the falsehoods and
misrepresentations told by the Minister of Finance to a committee of
Parliament? Was the Minister in contempt of Parliament?

Why won’t the Canadian media report (a) government tax revenues
gained from BCE in 2006 when BCE was a corporation to (b) government
tax revenues that would be gained in 2007 from BCE, if BCE had been
allowed to proceed to a trust, and (c) government tax revenues that
will be gained in 2007 from BCE, when BCE ownership has been carved
up as 45% foreign ownership and 55% large Canadian pension fund
ownership?